Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back writer Irwin Jay Asher of Florida with Southern Cuisine, a tender and courageous love story set in the Greenwood District of Tulsa in the early twentieth century. The narrative crescendos during the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, when white citizens—some sanctioned and deputized by police—set fire to a prosperous Black community known as Black Wall Street. It remains the largest incident of racial violence in American history.
But Asher begins long before the flames, when Henry Matthias and Emmet Tilden first meet in line for the toilet in grade school. Henry is a dreamer who longs to open a restaurant on Main Street; Emmet’s father already owns a tailor shop there and expects his son to inherit it when he retires to train racehorses. As the boys become best friends, Emmet’s inheritance becomes an unwanted burden.
“Emmet understood what the family expected of him. But, a voice in his soul said: I’d rather work side by side with Henry in the restaurant business. His stomach clenched whenever he stood next to Henry, a feeling he could not identify. He liked the sensation and missed it when they were apart.”
Neither boy can see the future—neither the World War looming ahead, nor the murderous mob that will set fire to their dreams, nor the feelings that will bud and bloom between them. In the mud and terror of a foxhole these boys become men and realize that they belong to one another. Henry’s dream of a restaurant becomes their shared reality, earning rave reviews and anchoring their lives in joy and purpose. And then history intervenes.
Asher writes these young men with energy and vitality. Henry introduces Emmet to jazz, which becomes a metaphor for the tension, improvisation, and joy that spark whenever they are together. Their world is far from perfect—they eventually marry two sisters who save their lives during the massacre, and one wonders what their relationship meant for Gwen and Ida. But two men in love, especially two Black men in the South, could not live openly at that time. The choices they made were already audacious.
Southern Cuisine is a heart‑warming and passionate story that honors not only the physicality of Henry and Emmet’s love, but also the social stigma and mortal danger that shadowed it. Asher reminds us that tenderness can survive catastrophe, and that love—quiet, steadfast, and brave—can be as revolutionary as any act of defiance.
Read “Southern Cuisine” in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Irwin Jay Asher, EdD, is an award-winning writer of plays, short stories and novels. He has recently published his first book of essays, A Life of Learning.
“My straight friends and family choose to be ignorant about gay and lesbian life. I say ‘choose’ because they lean on ancient facts they’ve heard along the way that have no basis in reality.
Dreams come true. I was brought up with the Hollywood Dream Factory. Today, as an educator, I hope to educate those that care, and show how ordinary and extraordinary gay men make magic.”